Acer Aspire R 15 Review

While you can get laptops with full-HD screens and 2-in-1s that bend back into tablets for under $700, most make you compromise color output or build quality. But the Acer Aspire R 15 doesn’t compromise on that aspects and delivers you a premium aluminum design, fantastic keyboard and extremely vibrant 15-inch display for a starting price of just $649.99 (approx Rs 44,000).

The R 15 isn’t without its trade-offs, most notably its mechanical hard drive and copious bloatware, but you won’t see a better value on a large-screen 2-in-1. Here is our review on Acer Aspire R 15

Image Source: Notebook Review

Image Source: Notebook Review

Design

The Acer Aspire R 15’s aluminum lid bends back 360 degrees, allowing you to put it in laptop, flat, tent, tablet and display modes. The notebook has the same gunmetal-gray aluminum on its deck that it has on its lid. However, we noticed a little bit of flex when we pressed down on the palm rest. The laptop’s soft-rubber underside includes glass fiber and silver particles to allow it to be both thin and rigid.

Image Source: Gizmo Times

Image Source: Gizmo Times

Measuring 0.79 inches thick, the Aspire R 15 is thinner than the Toshiba Satellite L55T-C5388 and the HP Notebook 15 (both 0.96 inches), and close to the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 2-in-1(0.78 inches). The Aspire R 15 weighs 4.8 pounds, making it lighter than the Satellite L55T (5.2 pounds), and similar to the HP Notebook 15 (4.8 pounds) and the Inspiron 15 (4.6 pounds).

Image Source: You Tube

Image Source: You Tube

On the left side of the Aspire R 15, you’ll find an HDMI port, three USB ports (one Type-C 3.1 that cannot draw power, two standard Type-A 3.0) and a headphone jack. A USB 2.0 port and an SD card reader sit on the right side, alongside power and volume buttons.

Keyboard, Touch-Pad and Touch-Screen

The backlit keyboard on Aspire R 15 feels extremely snappy and responsive, with a strong tactile feel that you don’t find on most competitors. The Aspire’s keys offer 1.49 millimeters of travel and require 58 grams to actuate, measures that are near enough to what we hope to find in a laptop (1.5 to 2 mm; 60 g).

Image Source: Notebook Reviews

Image Source: Notebook Reviews

The one problem you’ll find on the the Aspire R 15’s keyboard is that the directional arrow keys are placed in a confusing manner. Not only are the up and down keys half the size of the left and right keys that they sit between, but the keys for increasing and decreasing brightness are reversed, so you’ll tap the full sun to dim and the empty one to brighten. That seemed too strange for us too.

The Aspire R 15 4.2 x 3.0-inch touch-pad easily registered input correctly while navigating through the desktop and the internet. While it provided a sturdy feel to each click and correctly picked up scrolling gestures, it was slow to recognize three-finger Windows app-switching swipes. The Aspire R 15’s touch-screen display also kept up with fingers accurately.

Display

The Acer Aspire R 15’s 15.6-inch display provides crisp details and lively color, but it is too glossy. As per the Laptop Mag, the Aspire R 15 can display 109 percent of the sRGB spectrum, which is impressive for a laptop in this price range. It beats the HP Notebook 15 (63 percent), Inspiron 15 7000 (62 percent), Satellite L55T (65 percent) and the category average (89 percent).

Image Source: Lowyat.net

The Aspire R 15’s display earned a 4 on the Delta-E test (where zero is perfect). That’s worse than the HP Notebook 15 (3.5) and the Inspiron 15 (0.7), but slightly better than the Satellite L55T (4.3) and the category average (4.59).

The Aspire R 15’s screen is also quite bright, as it emits up to 310 nits (a measure of brightness), thus outshining the HP Notebook 15 (220 nits), Inspiron 15 (209 nits), Satellite L55T (192 nits) and the average mainstream laptop (245 nits).

Graphics and Audio

The Aspire R 15 is equipped with an Intel HD Graphics 520 unit that scored a 49,995 in the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited test. Surely it won’t support games with high requirements, but can run games like Asphalt 8 and the pre-installed Candy Crush Soda Saga. The HP Notebook 15 (51,066), Inspiron 15 (52,333), Satellite L55T (66,251) and average mainstream laptop (72,229) notched better marks.

The Acer Aspire R 15 blasts a lot of volume and delivered a great reproduction of sound while playing any type of music. The sound of the speakers was clear and crisp and was easily audible in a large conference room. The notebook also features the Dolby Audio sound adjustment utility.

Performance

The Acer Aspire R 15 is powered by an Intel Core i5-6200U CPU and 8 GB RAM, the Aspire R 15 enables fantastic multitasking with an ease. When splitting the screen between a dozen tabs and a streaming video, we didn’t detect a hint of lag. There was no stutter when we pushed the Aspire further, opening another dozen tabs, the Camera app and Candy Crush Soda Saga.

As per the Laptop Mag, the Acer Aspire R 15 scored a 5,318 on the Geekbench 3, which is less than the Core i5-6200U-powered HP Notebook 15 (5,784) and Inspiron 15 (5,768), the Core i7-6500U-powered Satellite L55T (6,888) and the average for mainstream notebooks (7,471).

The Aspire R 15’s 5,400-rpm hard drive took 2 minutes and 50 seconds to copy 4.97 GB of multimedia files, for a speed of 29.9 Mbps. That’s similar to the 5,400-rpm drives in the HP Notebook 15 (29.57 Mbps) and Satellite L55T (29.4 Mbps), but much slower than the SSD drive in the Inspiron 15 (145.4 Mbps) and the category average (127.93 Mbps).

You won’t have to worry about the Acer Aspire R 15 getting too hot to handle. As per the Laptop Mag‘s heat test, after streaming 15 minutes of full-screen HD video on the notebook, it registered temperatures below 95 degrees Fahrenheit comfort threshold on its touch-pad (79 degrees), keyboard (82.5 degrees) and undercarriage (92 degrees).

Battery Life

The notebook lasted 5 hours and 20 minutes on the Laptop Mag‘s Battery Test (web surfing over Wi-Fi at 100 nits of brightness), which is a little less than the HP Notebook 15 (5:51), Inspiron 15 (5:33) and the average for mainstream notebooks (5:51). The Satellite L55T (5:05) lasted even less time.

Configuration Options

Acer sells the Aspire R 15 in two configurations. The $649.99 (approx Rs 44,000) base model features a Core i5 CPU and 8G B RAM. If you need more performance, its $849.99 (approx Rs 57,000) big brother packs a Core i7 CPU and 12 GB RAM.

Verdict

Most laptops that cost $1,000 don’t have screens that can display 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut, but the R 15’s screen is that vibrant, and it starts at just $649. Also, Acer Aspire R 15 offers eye-popping color output, a very comfortable keyboard, rich audio, a premium bend-back design and solid performance.

However, if you want better performance in your 2-in-1, consider spending $100 more for the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 2-in-1, which comes with an SSD. However, if you’re looking for a big-screen 2-in-1 with a fantastic display at a reasonable price, the Aspire R 15 is your best choice.

Source: Laptop Mag